Nerdy Texts of Analog and Embedded Systems Wizardry

OK. I finished shoe-horning necessary functions into this beast. Somebody tell me something that needs to change or this beta becomes legit by tomorrow.
There are a whopping 12 bytes left in memory, and the OS has had a lot of fat trimmed.

Here’s beta 4 (final):
http://www.narrat1ve.com/WTPA_Firmware_0x03.tar.gz

And here’s the R3 changelog, so if you don’t know, now you know:

Firmware Version 0x03:
==============================================================================
Wed Sep 2 09:37:49 CDT 2009

Done:
— Hardcoded explicit bank start address variables into define statements. They are constants in our current system; this will prevent them from being overwritten, save us some RAM and some cycles.
— Sample Start / Window / Endpoint editing, realtime adjustment. Samples with will reverse when the start point is put after the endpoint.
— Separated the “bail” command for FX and loop adjustments in MIDI
— Re-number MIDI CCs
— Added MIDI option to edit samples with wide range or tighter resolution (editing pot is an 8-bit value, MIDI is 7)
— Added “edit mode” which sucks. But allows you to stop holding down three buttons while you edit a sample.
— Removed some un- or underused softclock (timer) and Uart functions — we’re running low on flash memory.
— Divided AudioHandler routines into bank-specific routines for ISR speed BUT
–> this means we are way over memory. So, got rid of intro sequence, debug mode, all sawtooth stuff, removed some timer functions, changed MIDI handling (don’t recognize bytes we don’t use anyway), changed LED blink functions (all blink times the same)
–> Also kilt the random number init code. Changed pinning in multiply-output mode.

xo
TB

So my housemate has this really fancypants french press which is all like “she think she cute” but actually ends up making the siltiest coffee ever. You’d think that with all the video business going on I would let it slide but I ended up ordering a bunch of stainless steel cloth and some silicone washers from McMaster and going to town on that piece.

I made an additional filter with a piece of 200 x 200 mesh which according to McMaster is more than good enough to keep flour-sized particles out, and stood it off on said washer (compressed to keep particles from coming up around the shaft). The french press got a better but damned if there still wasn’t silt. I decided to worry about my job again.

More new media art binnis for Cory.
This is basically an installation specific version of that little SBC/datalogger thingy I made. This one hangs out on a silly putting practice stand and plays back controller keypresses on a PS1 when you whack the ball.

To do this, first (well, first you design a weird SBC for new media artists, but) you replace the controller’s MCU (in this case some proprietary TQFP guy) and figure out where his data lines are. I happened to already know that the PS1 basically talks SPI. Some low temp solder and a rework station was used to perform said brain surgery.

The datalines and switch lines are then brought out to my baby, where it handles communication with the PS1. You can then record the game into it, put it on your PC, and do whatever mess you need to with the data.

That golf tee had a set of optical photointerrupters inside it which were originally used to keep track of how hard you hit the ball and how badly you shanked it. I wired one of them to just give me a clean square wave when the ball moved appreciably, since that’s all we needed to know for our game. The code on the “TiVo” had to get changed to account for this, which was no biggie.

Eventually, these things had to get re-built cause Cory got worried that art students would have a few too many PBRs at the openings and eventually whiff and take out one of the external PCBs. I ended up ultimately shock mounting them inside the stand itself. That’s also why Cory is a good client, because he is almost certainly correct. There is a good chance that would have happened before leaving Narrat1ve labs :-)

The dataloggers/TiVos/weird new media art passed the test and I got tooled up to make a bunch. Sometime in the interim, Atmel’s distributors RAN OUT OF STOCK on a lot of their dataflash parts and so there’s a smaller flash chip (the AT45DB161D vs the AT45DB642) which just so happened to be able to fit on that footprint. The tiny, precious Hirose DF series programming connector got replaced by a good-old 6-pin standard-ass 0.1″ header, which made my life easier and really didn’t lose us any board real estate. Above is the pasting of the boards. Yours truly was a human pick and place with these.

I got this fancy Fancourt Flip Rack to theoretically assemble WTPAs, but it got its first shakedown here. It was super handy for soldering in switches and headers for this design.

The assembled panels…

And one of the devices under test. The Cheetah sticker makes it run faster.

At the end of January I drove back to the city of heavenly taquerias and got jiggy with installing new brains in Remoc, just the cutesy wootsiest Elder God you could ever hope to meet!

Our boy assumed this position for many hours. Quoth the security ladies at the front desk, “Your Monster is all Drunked over!”

Here’s what the sensors look like in vivo. The little wire goes to a sheet of copper tape which is adhered to the inside of one of Remoc’s surfaces where he’ll be sensing touch (for instance, his finger — you’ll never guess what happens if you pull it). These plates are all of different sizes and shapes, and of accordingly make for different signal strengths on the output. They are also pretty close to one another sometimes and it certainly seems from looking at the ADC readings like there are some irritiating interactions between some sensors. If I did this again, they would each have an enable line and be polled sequentially. But.

The little boards get stuck down somewhere convenient and close to the tape, and then the more-or-less DC sensor signal is shuttled back through a cable.

Finally, the guy who sculpted Remoc managed to set his entire body cavity on fire shortly after all the copper tape and wiring was installed. This adds a real “wild card” element to the sensor system which keeps it fun!

Anyhoo, after a long install, he was back up and gibbering, and there was much rejoicing!

[Ed note: since this time, word has again arisen from the West that the cultists are stirring. It is likely this is not the last time we will sojourn to the Comer, dear reader, or as I like to call it, “Baby Boo Miskatonic”]